Staccato

“ When their staccato twinkle is added as a finish to the long pendulum swing of a big glissade, or a long jeté en tournant, the effect is that of a swift pizzicato following a long-sustained note—always surprising, always merry. ”

“ Satan repeated, "and he who plays upon it dies at once. But," he added cheerfully, "that need not worry you. I noticed a marvelous facility in your arm work. Your staccato and spiccato are wonderful. Every form of bowing appears child's play to you. It will be easy for you to avoid touching the string." ”

“ A woman's scream was next heard, rising in a piercing staccato. Then all was silence again. At length a shutter was thrown open at one of the front windows of the house, and a shaft of light made a brilliant path through the deep shadow. ”

“ Although this lack of clearness in our system of musical notation is to be regretted, one cannot help but think that this very general way of expressing the whole variety of detached staccato bowing, is really a gain to the artist. ”

“ Tenuto (ten.) indicates that a tone or chord is to be held to its full value. This word is sometimes used after a staccato passage to show that the staccato effect is to be discontinued, but is often used merely as a warning not to slight a melody-tone—i.e., to give it its full value.
117. Veloce means—swiftly, and is applied to brilliant passages (e.g., cadenzas) which are to be played as rapidly as possible without much regard for measure rhythm. ”

“ Any slovenliness in the management of the wrist will result in some of the notes being missed, and others obtaining more than one of the springing strokes. Although this style of bowing is expressed exactly as solid staccato, it is very seldom that arpeggios would be played other than with slurred spiccato, the unhelpable roughness which accompanies a short staccato stroke on an open string, renders the solid staccato impracticable for passages regularly crossing the strings. ”

“ The deeper grooves sometimes present a succession of short staccato touches, just as when one presses the finger vertically along some surface where the resistance is sufficient to interrupt the action without actually stopping it,—a kind of grating motion, showing how firmly the instrument which produced it must have been held in the moving mass. ”

“ The staccato with the wheel is surprisingly brilliant; the defect of the instrument for the listener is its monotony of force and intonation, and for the player the extreme fatigue which the rotary motion induces in the muscles of the right arm. Even in England a clever performer may sometimes (though rarely) be heard about the streets. ”

“ First, always practice softly; try to produce a light positive attack in the middle register. My tongue is never rigid when playing, and rests at the bottom of my mouth, the end pressed slightly against the lower teeth. I then produce the staccato, by the centre of the tongue striking against the roof of the mouth. This I have practiced so as to acquire rapid single Tongueing without fatigue, nor causing a clumsy tone, and when under full control, Double and Triple Tongueing becomes a simple matter by diligent practice, keeping the mind upon each articulation. ”

“ Thus, by singing staccato the syllable koo, slowly at first and gradually quicker, with a movement of the larynx and windpipe that is both seen and felt; and with the tongue and lips at rest and motionless, the right movement is given to the organ in trills and all other embellishments, and by continued practice the movement becomes more rapid. Those who need to be taught this movement must never practice continuously for any length of time, for we must avoid fatiguing the organs. ”

“ Staccato whistles and snarls follow each other at most extraordinary intervals of pitch, and the attempt at showing off is sometimes unmistakable. Occasionally he takes to the air, and flies from one tree to another ”

“ If any movements other than those described are allowed, the student will find that he can never execute this difficult bowing beyond a certain speed, or if he does flatter himself in to the belief that he has arrived at a brilliant execution of it, on comparison it will be found that instead of the recognised bowing, it is one of the various kinds of trick staccato, often accomplished by a slight tremolo of the fore-arm or some such movement. ”

“ Oh, the dismal dawn that woke me, it came through the window that I had left wide open. I sat up in bed. I was still dressed. My spurs had torn the coverlet, the trumpet and its blood-red silken cord lay upon the floor. The wind blew in, shaking the curtains mournfully. ”

“ The mound, though but low, was awfully steep, and with each step I took the mass of dust and cinders tore down with me and gave way under my feet. The dust rose and choked me; it was sickening, foetid, awful; but my climb was, I felt, for life or death, and I struggled on. The seconds seemed hours; but the few moments I had in starting, combined with my youth and strength, gave me a great advantage, and, though several forms struggled after me in deadly silence which was more dreadful than any sound, I easily reached the top. ”

“ The mound was one of the tallest in the region of dust, and as I struggled to the top, panting for breath and with my heart beating like a sledge-hammer, I saw away to my left the dull red gleam of the sky, and nearer still the flashing of lights. Thank God! I knew where I was now and where lay the road to Paris!
For two or three seconds I paused and looked back. My pursuers were still well behind me, but struggling up resolutely, and in deadly silence. Beyond, the shanty was a wreck-a mass of timber and moving forms. ”

“ Again, we sat in the cool shade, with the myriad noises of nature both without and within our bower merging into that drowsy hum in whose sufficing environment the great world with its disturbing trouble, and its more disturbing joys, can be effectually forgotten. ”

“ I felt hat, boots and belt upon me; the falcon was on my wrist. I clapped my hand on my left hip and was astonished to find—no sword. That, somehow, brought me to, and I sat [Pg 105] down at the table again feeling shrunk—shrunk? do you understand that word?—shrunk like an apple that has been all winter in the cellar—shrunk like a warrior who wakes to find himself a woman. "She hung down her head and all her little face grew red," how exactly those words brought her image before me. This little milksop. I was sitting at the table; the old butler had gone to order the carriage ”

“ Then, stoker, see yourself,
Exalted, even though
Your tortured body die:
You gaze down on yourself,
In blindness as you lie.
The worker is mortal,
The work lives on:
The stoker is dying,
The lamp sings on ”

“ Everything was pitch dark--so dark that at times they had to feel their way by the palings and tree-trunks. They could still see, seemingly far in front of them and high up, the baleful light which at the height and distance seemed like a faint line. ”

“ I laughed at the curling tongs, and blew the little lamp out—my hair did not want curling tongs. I laughed to think of the frights of women going about with their noses in the air, who had to curl their heads. ”

“ The man with the false nose had to die, the woman with the false heart had to die. But the man first.
“It was quite easy for me to kill him right there in the street. But were I to do so, I would be captured to a certainty, and then the woman would escape. You see my point, monsieur.”
He uncorked the flask as he spoke and poured out the wine with a hand as steady as the hand of a young man, albeit the moonlight, now strong almost as the light of day, showed the metacarpal bones separately and distinctly as though it were the hand of a skeleton. ”

“ I played so intently that I paid attention to nothing else and was greatly startled to hear a noise as if someone were pulling on a rope. I looked up and there was a stag whose nostrils were quivering with excitement as if he scented the music. ”

“ Here lordly stallions fret and fume,
Here streams o'er briar and brake the chase.
Here sounds a horn, here turns a face,
How filled with fires of life and lust!
Wind shakes the arras and betrays
—Dust. ”

“ She had infinite resource, and would doubtless find some other means of leaving a clue. Telling the others therefore to keep back I threw the rays of the lamp over roof and walls and floor as we proceeded.
It was a strange scene. The candles and lamp showing up but patches of light in the inky black darkness; the moving figures projected against the lights as I looked back; the silence broken by the shuffling tread of stumbling feet on the rock floor; the eager intense faces, when a change in the light flashed them into view. ”

“ It was like her to forget and spend the precious time lazing and playing about with “wuzzards.” The sun was taking his plunge into the sea, darkness was upon them, and she could not find her way back in the dark. Moon or starlight would be of no use. ”

“ The abysmal darkness about the Hand filled with impalpable suggestions, with uncertain, fluctuating shapes.
Then, suddenly, came a sound, like the sound of a tolling bell: faint, as if infinitely far; muffled, as though heard through thick swathings of darkness: a deep, vibrating resonance, with vast gulfs of silence between each stroke. And the Hand appeared to tighten on the rod. And I saw far above the Hand, towards the apex of the darkness, a circle of dim phosphorescence, a ghostly sphere whence these sounds came throbbing ”

“ I was awakened by some sound; I do not know what. I only know that it came through my sleep; for all at once I found myself awake, with my heart beating wildly, listening anxiously for some sound from my Father's room. My room is next Father's, and I can often hear him moving about before I fall asleep. He works late at night, sometimes very late indeed; so that when I wake early, as I do occasionally, or in the grey of the dawn, I hear him still moving. ”

“ With one thrust I can kill a man; it is a fine thing to be a stag!" Just then the sound of the huntsman's bugle was heard in the distance, and the stag precipitately fled, followed by his wondering child. ”

“ Something made me start up, a low, piteous howling of dogs somewhere far below in the valley, which was hidden from my sight. Louder it seemed to ring in my ears, and the floating motes of dust to take new shapes to the sound as they danced in the moonlight. I felt myself struggling to awake to some call of my instincts; nay, my very soul was struggling, and my half-remembered sensibilities were striving to answer the call. I was becoming hypnotised! Quicker and quicker danced the dust ”

“ Think of thy lover under torture, on the rack, burnt at the stake. Hast ever seen a man after he has been broken on the wheel? his limbs torn from their sockets, his chest sunken under the weights—and the stake? ”

“ Three hundred gentlemen, able to ride, Three hundred horses as gallant and free, Beheld him escape on the evening tide, Far out till he sank in the Severn Sea, Till he sank in the depths of the sea— The stag, the buoyant stag, the stag That slept at last in a jewelled bed Under the sheltering ocean spread, The stag, the runnable stag. ”

“ With the moonlight there came a fierce sigh of the storm which appeared to resume its course with a long, low howl, as of many dogs or wolves. I was awed and shocked, and I felt the cold perceptibly grow upon me till it seemed to grip me by the heart. ”

“ For if only the slitting of one ear in a stag hath been found sufficient to propagate the defect through a whole forest, why should we wonder at the greatest consequences, from so many loppings and mutilations to which the ears of our fathers and our own have been of late so much exposed? ”

“ I parted the brush before me; and Stack, close on my heels, eased it back into place behind us without so much as a swish. I was as careful with my feet, feeling for a safe and noiseless foothold at every step. We came out on the edge of the waste of hardhack with no more sound than shadows. We were of a world of shadows. ”

“ She felt the strain acutely; for the road seemed to be always curving away from her. Moreover there was another cause of concern. Night was coming on. Even in the densest mist or the blackest fog the light or darkness of the sky is to some degree apparent. Now the sense came on her that over the thick mist was darkness. She stopped a moment and getting out looked at her watch in the light of the lamps. ”

“ But the whirlwind tells no tidings of its victim, save his parting scream as he is borne onwards! Horrible night! It was dark, pitch dark; no moon, No, no. No moon. Not a star. Not a little feeble, twinkling, solitary star. ”

“ It is not improbable, that the whole scene may have been a kind of waking dream, or if it was wholly transacted in sleep, it might have been with such a forcible and vivid vibration, or impulse of the nerves concerned in the formation of such an image, as would give it the distinctness and vivacity of waking sensation. In the tumult of his spirits, and the fear-excited vibrations of his whole system, it is not strange, that the image of that disappointed and reproaching parent should be presented to him, with a solemn and foreboding aspect. ”

“ She moved the curtains aside and entered the room, darkening the window space, passed across the room without the least sound, reached the bed, and knelt down beside it. Her hand was feeling for him, it touched his neck, he raised his head slightly from the pillow and her arm, gliding like a snake round his neck drew his head towards her ”

“ When all is secure, and I have pulled you both up by the windlass so as to clear the top, I shall throw out ballast which we shall carry on purpose, and away we go! I am sorry it must be so uncomfortable for you both, but there is no other way. ”

“ Did I want a simile, I might compare myself to a well-banked furnace, whose present function it is to contain heat rather than to create it; whose crust can at any moment be broken by a force external to itself, and burst into raging, all-compelling heat. No thought of fear really entered my mind. Every other emotion there was, coming and going as occasion excited or lulled, but not fear. ”